head to head · open source
conductor vs Trigger
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger has 16,324 stars, 1,462 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conductor leads on adoption by 97% (32,207 vs 16,324 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Trigger 9%. Trigger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (workflow-automation), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| conductor | Trigger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick conductor if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Trigger if
- You want the Trigger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Trigger fits your workflow better
About conductor
Conductor is an Apache 2.0 licensed, event driven agentic workflow engine written in Java that provides durable and highly resilient execution for applications and AI agents, aimed at teams running microservices, AI agents, and adaptive workflow graphs that need orchestration they can version, inspect, and recover.
read the full conductor overview →
About Trigger
Trigger is an open source TypeScript platform for building and deploying AI agents and workflow tasks. It lives in the infrastructure, orchestration, and scheduling ecosystem, and it is positioned as a way to run long running AI tasks without typical serverless timeout constraints. The project provides a software development kit, a deployment target, and operational features such as retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling.
read the full Trigger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or Trigger more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and Trigger has 16,324. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and Trigger free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Trigger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and Trigger?
conductor is written in Java and Trigger in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, conductor or Trigger?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Trigger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.